Claudia Zarazua

Regional Arts & Culture Planner

Claudia joined MAPC as a Regional Arts & Culture Planner in April 2020. She has been working at the intersection of art, public space, and community for the past 12 years.

Claudia relocated to the Boston area after completing her Masters of City Planning at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, where she was the recipient of the David Crane Urban Design Excellence Award. Since then, she has worked as a planning consultant, program associate for the Climate Smart Cities program at the Trust for Public Land, and planner for the Town of Wellesley. In that role, she led the historic preservation efforts and supported the implementation of the town’s unified plan. More recently, she has been a consultant on design guidelines and wayfinding for small municipalities.

Before attending graduate school, Claudia was a project manager for the Department of Arts and Culture for the City of San Antonio, Texas. In that role, she oversaw a portfolio of more than 20 public art projects amounting to a budget of $5.9 million of capital improvements.

As a researcher, Claudia has worked for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in their International Land Conservation Network and the Penn Institute for Urban Research supporting their Global Urban Commons initiative. She has studied informal settlements and waterfront development in Mumbai, India and historic preservation in the public realm in Suzhou, China. She holds a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Claudia’s interests include the production of public space, art as an anchor of public life, productive landscapes, urban storytelling, inclusive representation in placemaking, and historic preservation.

She lives in Cambridge with her husband and their baby boy. They enjoy traveling (when permitted) and tending to their vegetable garden.

MAPC

Promoting Smart Growth & Regional Planning

The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) is the regional planning agency serving the people who live and work in the 101 cities and towns of Metropolitan Boston. Our mission is to promote smart growth and regional collaboration. Our regional plan, MetroFuture, guides our work as we engage the public in responsible stewardship of our region’s future.